Some indeterminate time passed by after the nurse’s visit, during which he semi-dozed while the strange nerve twinges gradually waned, thankfully. Eventually, the door opened, and a small, dark-haired man wearing the traditional white coat came in and looked him over.

“So, you tried drinking boiled marijuana leaves. Interesting way of hospitalizing yourself.” He said in flawless English.

This observation was accompanied by a shaken head and a frown on the part of the doctor. Jason went to deny it but then realized that it was probably a better explanation than the real one. The doctor pursed his lips and nodded at Jason’s aborted attempt to speak.

 “Yes, Weak and disorientated, aren’t you?”

Jason nodded.

“How long?” Jason managed to croak through dry lips.

“Five days, young man. You died twice in the first two days from cardiac arrest. You were very lucky. I hope you have learned your lesson?”

The doctor looked like he wasn’t all that impressed with his patient’s intelligence, which Jason decided was understandable in the circumstances. The circumstances certainly looked pretty stupid from the doctor’s viewpoint. Then the full import of what the doctor had said struck home. Died twice! Jason thought in surprise. Oh. And yet, he was still here. Ah, the marvels of modern medical knowledge. I wonder if… He broke off that thought and smiled at the doctor.

“Yes, sir.” He muttered, finding it surprisingly hard to speak.

His throat and mouth felt like someone had taken sandpaper to them. Dry, harsh, and nothing seemed to want to work properly. The doctor nodded at him.

“Well, you seem to be on the road to recovery. Your body is getting back to normal, and now that you are conscious, that is one more thing I can cross off my list. I will be back to check on you this evening. In the meantime, please stay in bed today and rest up. Your body is debilitated and behaving very strangely even though it appears to be recovering now. You had a bizarre reaction to whatever you drank. Almost like an epileptic fit in some ways. Very odd. Anyway, you will be staying here for the moment while we wait for the latest round of blood tests.” He paused and nodded at the catheter in Jason’s wrist. “We took more blood earlier while you were still in a coma. The first blood test came back with some very strange results, which is why we are retesting. Drink lots of water. Call for help with any bodily needs, yes?”

Jason reluctantly nodded. Yuk, he means bedpans. Jason semi-dozed some more and drank all the water left on the mobile table next to the bed. When he used the help button, he was surprised to find the nurse was quite willing to help him into the bathroom and then wait outside. A damn sight better than using a bedpan! By the time the doctor returned in the afternoon, he was feeling considerably more alive and sitting up. A quick check of his vital signs and he was allowed a light dinner which caused his stomach to churn a little at first and give him the feeling that he was going to throw up initially, but his stomach settled down, and Jason was feeling much better by the time he fell asleep.

Well, there was only one way to find out, he thought to himself. But he still hesitated for another few minutes before steeling himself to take the glass, and with eyes closed, he drank the liquid. Which sort of tasted like licorice, or what he imagined liquid licorice would taste like. I hope all this means it was not just a type of licorice plant, he thought to himself. He could feel the liquid run down inside him, and seemingly nothing happened. He sighed in exasperation and relaxed as he started packing things up. Then his guts suddenly twisted and not so much hurt as he began to feel really strange. He saw stars and sat down on the bed, where he quickly found himself struggling to breathe. His vision started tunneling as his chest labored, and he leaned over the bed to the house phone, managed to press zero to get reception, and as he felt himself fading away, he heard a voice say in Greek. “Reception. How may I help you?”

“Medical emergency, room three oh four.” He sputtered out in Greek, and then everything went all black on him.

Chapter 7

Huh! Not dead yet!

Jason opened his eyes into darkness and experienced a moment of panic but then realized he was in a dark room where the features were unclear due to the gloom. His body felt heavy and lethargic, while the act of raising his head to look around left him feeling exhausted and rather nauseous. His waking up must have done something somewhere because a few moments later, what had seemed to be a solid wall over to his right proved to have a door.

The door opened to admit a lot of light, and a female in a uniform he decided had to be that of a nurse came bustling into the room. She gave him a slight smile and said hello in Greek, after which her conversational skills seemed to be limited to very simple phrases. She took his blood pressure and temperature before updating a clipboard at the end of the bed. During this operation, she said little beyond occasionally muttering a few placating words in his direction, which he gathered were designed to calm him more by the tone than the actual content. It was possible she didn’t realize he could speak Greek if she knew he was an American. The nurse finished with her tasks and told him to stay in bed till the doctor came and accompanied these words with suitable hand motions that confirmed his earlier suspicion. As he didn’t even feel the need to attend the bathroom, he was happy to oblige her request, given how strange his body felt. He had aches and pains throughout his body, he had discovered as he woke up fully, but they were only dull aches and pains, as if he’d been run over by a truck, say a month ago or something. Very odd.

He was getting small nerve twinges all over his body as well. They were only mild, small sudden twitches or jerks, but it felt really strange like he was a puppet and someone was not so much as pulling on the strings but rather just jerking them a little. It was also a bit like pins and needles but sharper, if not as painful, and not so generalized. Instead, it was like little pins being shoved into him here, there, and everywhere. Mostly on the inside rather than on the outside, as happened with pins and needles. He lay there hurting, twitching, and trying to remember what had happened. Ahh. His mental blankness regarding how he got here was suddenly full of memories of making the liquid concoction. What the hell had he been thinking?

For those of you who didn’t know we have been moving house. A tedious business that also involved a lot of travel as our new house is 190km or 118 miles from our old address. Two and half hours by car.
Uplift (i.e. they loaded our stuff) was the 19th and delivery the 20th.

This is my new office: (When the weather is fine)

View from office to the left and the right and then the left

I wrote nothing last week due to all the travel etc.
Where we are at:
Kyron the rescuer is at the editor finally
I have started on the Kelad Onslaught which is the third New Federation book.
I am thinking that the next Ithria book will be one joint volume with both Taroniah and Kyron working together….. it depends on how much storyline there is.
The first Western Reaches book (The further adventures of Princess Gizel) should follow the Ithria book or books.

After that – tentatively – Taroniah at Home and Kyron the Conquerer.
and then we’ll see.

Peter

“That’s actually quite interesting,” Jason commented as he moved to one of the bushes. He pointed at some lichen on a rock nearby. “Is that the odd lichen as well?”

The local moved over to where Jason had pointed and peered at the lichen before nodding in affirmation.

“Yes, it is. It is spreading too. See, I’m sure that area there is new.”

His guide pointed at the part of the lichen-covered rock to the right-hand side of the patch and moved a little in that direction. While he was looking at the lichen, Jason stripped a couple of fresh, new-growth leaves off the plant that looked like marijuana and shoved them in his pocket before his guide looked up again.

He continued to play the part of the interested amateur for some time as they discussed the erosion of the area by the sea. They both agreed that although the plants had spread a little in recent times, it was probably because there had been no big storms coming from the right direction for a couple of years. It was pretty clear that the whole area was slowly eroding into the sea, even if it would take many years, possibly centuries, for that to happen. It was an interesting discussion, but eventually, the boatman realized it was getting late and insisted they return to the boat and head back to civilization before it got too dark.

Jason had to restrain himself over his desire to try out the leaves and made a valiant effort to be patient during the sail back to the small port and then the drive back to his hotel. He had to put off experimenting with the leaves until after the previously organized dinner at the hotel. He only just made the dinner on time because of the lengthy trip. The group of Symposium attendees that Jason was ostensibly with had arranged a special dinner with a couple of Archaeologists working on the Akrotiri site. Jason found the discussion around the table far more interesting than he had anticipated, and not just because he could understand the parts in Greek that they thought he couldn’t follow! Even so, by the time the meal and the after-dinner discussion were finished, he was chomping at the bit, wanting to get back to his room. Then he realized he couldn’t boil the leaves in his room because there was no stove with a hotplate. Damn! He looked at the small jug for boiling water to make coffee but decided not to try it. He went to bed very frustrated but refused to give up.

The next day he wandered around the small town and found a general store that sold some camping goods. They had a small camp stove setup, complete with a small gas bottle which he bought. They also had a small saucepan-type thing that was made with a handle that folded into the center of the saucepan so it would pack easier in a rucksack or such, and he headed back to his room with his purchases. He soon had the leaves boiling away and was just trying to decide how long to give it when the water changed color. It was clear the leaves had reached a point where some chemical had been released due to the boiling they were undergoing.  He turned off the gas and looked at his concoction. He poured some of the water into a glass and studied it. The color was a dull, transparent reddish-brown and smelled slightly of licorice. The leaves had largely broken up into small to tiny particles that were suspended in the water, while the still largely intact stem parts had sunk to the bottom of the small pot. He sat the glass on the small bench near where he’d set up the camp stove and studied the water for some time.

Coming back from Nea Kameni, they detoured around Palea Kameni towards Therasia. Knowing that the eruption largely carried east and southeast, he asked his guide if any of this island was untouched by the eruption. The fellow at first shook his head but then, glancing at Jason with narrowed eyes, suggested that the northwestern coast of Therasia was perhaps the least affected, but it would cost more to go that far out of his way. Of course! Jason thought to himself. Jason agreed to the increased cost after a little mild haggling, and eventually, the boat wandered out of the bay around the southern point of that island. A bit of open sea sailing followed before the man eventually turned the boat into a protected bay that didn’t look all that exciting.

The boat went around a large upthrust of rock with the low swell causing the small waves to break against the rock, but the upthrust also served to protect a somewhat hidden and sheltered cove where the wave swell was reduced to some extent. His guide grabbed a rope in the bow, waited for an upswell, and nimbly jumped ashore. The rope was quickly tied around a convenient piece of protruding rock, and Jason tried to emulate his guide’s smooth exit from the small boat. Having watched his guide closely, he waited for an upswell and then tried to hop ashore with the same ease the guide had shown. Well, at least he got ashore without getting wet! The guide waited until Jason had stood back up from the all-fours position Jason had finished up in before he pointed to an area further around the little bay.

“See there. That layer is the original island ground level before the eruption. You can tell by the type and color of the rock. There is another spot on the north coast where the sea has eroded the volcanic rock that covered almost everything after the big eruption as well.  I took a couple of English geologists up there and listened to their talk as they examined that area.” He clambered around an outcrop and then pointed at a sort of hollow. “See how there is a layer of eruption stone at the top with the original rock below. I think this was a cave channeled out by wind and waves. When the island erupted, the volcanic outflow was so heavy that the roof collapsed a fair way back, but perhaps not till well after the eruption, and then the fallen rock was eroded away over the three and half thousand years since.”

“Really?” Jason asked, suddenly a lot more interested as he grasped what the man was saying.

“Yes, Mr. Jason. You can see here at the back that there is a type of lichen growing that is like none found anywhere else on the island. And see these two types of bushes? They only grow here, and nowhere else on the island that I have seen. I brought a botanist here once, but he wasn’t impressed, saying the plants were obviously planted here in recent times as this one.” And he pointed at a weedy-looking thing. “It is like a type of thistle common in Greece, and the other is some branch of the hemp plant used to make marijuana, and he thought I was trying to hoax him. But truly, these two types of plants grow only here, and neither likes full sun, which is why they haven’t spread much, although that type of bush has expanded to that crevasse over there since the first time I was here.”

Sorry for not posting -in the process of moving and my normal routine is all over the place

That evening he used the hotel wi-fi to get on the net and study the plants of the area and particularly those peculiar to Santorini. He finally cut it off at about two in the morning when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any further. He hadn’t been able to reach any firm conclusions about the fauna on the island, possibly because he was so tired. As a result, he was late getting down to the conference room for the next morning’s presentations and struggled to stay awake in the early afternoon as the speakers droned on. Like most academic functions, some speakers were interesting and entertaining while others were as dry and boring as reading Titus Livius! He wondered which category his presentation had fallen into for those listening. Hopefully, more the former than the latter!

The next day was a lay day followed by one final day of presentations which included some really nice finds from the eastern end of the island. And then the conference was over. His first big international conference as a guest speaker! The next day a group of the attendees had signed on for the tourist trip to the islands and flew to Santorini, which expedition Jason joined, and he got a good look at the famous frescos. These were even more fascinating in the flesh, so to speak, and he enjoyed the tour of them as well as the small museum that housed various Minoan remains and artifacts that had been recovered from the site over the years. In many ways, the island was a lot like Pompei, with buried remains captured in situ only without the loss of life as it appeared the citizens had evacuated calmly well before the big eruption. Still, the remains were interesting and subject to a lot of studies.

He had specially requested that his trip be just to Santorini rather than spending several days touring the other islands as most of the others were going to do. So after arriving at the hotel and settling into his room, he went downstairs and asked at the desk about touring the island with a local rather than one of the tourist people the others were using on their short visit. He explained he was interested in getting an idea of what the ‘real’ Santorini was like. His newly acquired and, up until now, secret ability to communicate fluently in Greek seemed to go over well with the man behind the reception desk. The concierge put him in touch with some sort of relative who would be happy to show him around the island. The fellow even had a boat which meant they could visit the volcanic island growing in the middle of the caldera and some of the interesting rock formations around other parts of the island. It was all arranged in a few minutes and with a quick phone call.

The next morning he wandered through the business area and bought a cheap floppy hat and extra sunscreen at a convenience store as he made his way through the busy town. The skies were blue, and the water was an amazing shade of blue as well, probably from reflecting the sky, Jason thought as he headed for the business address of the man the concierge had hooked him up as a local guide. He managed to find the fellow without too much difficulty, his newfound facility with Greek making it a lot easier than it would have been otherwise! They discussed the various activities the fellow could offer and settled first on a motorized tour of some parts of the island nearby before taking to the water. The tour around the island was to be in the local’s rather beat-up Range Rover and was actually quite interesting. The fellow’s boat was docked at Vlichada on the south coast, and the boat appeared to be a relic from the War, probably the First World War by the looks of it! After a bit of fussing with the outboard motor that, fortunately, looked considerably younger than the boat, they had an interesting trip to the volcanic island and around the southern coast. The state of the boat was a worry, but it floated, and the outboard was at least modern, well, no more than twenty years old at least!

Taroniah at Bay
Barely two weeks after getting back from dealing with the Dragoth threat, Taroniah receives an unexpected visit from Princess Lorianne of Norburia. According to her, there is a God running riot in the southern Kingdoms of Ithria, and the Princess believes only Taroniah has the magical strength and capabilities to defeat it! Finding that she can’t say no to the Princess, she assembles her ships and heads south, leaving Korlah to run the businesses and look after her children, whom she has decided not to take with her. Facing a God is not something you want to do with children in tow, especially when it involves many weeks of wandering all over the countryside on horseback. When she finally gets a chance to face down the God, she finds that she may have bitten off more than she can chew!
Available at all Amazon sites.
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FKSWDKFD
AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0FKSWDKFD

Chapter 6

Thera!

Knossos was amazing. And he didn’t mind the much-derided re-construction either. At least the reconstruction gave you some idea of what the place may have looked like. It was sacrilege to say such things openly, of course, at least amongst archaeologists and academics, but he still felt it was better than just a lot of dusty ruins composed of lines of rock barely ankle high like so many Roman ruins. His address to the symposium, carefully prepared with the help of Professor Rawlins and the Head of School, Professor Jones, didn’t come out as stilted as he was afraid it would sound. He had very little experience speaking in public apart from a couple of presentations he did of parts of his first Thesis, and those had been to just a few academics and students at the university. Naturally, he was very nervous and stiff at the start, but he soon relaxed as he got into the spirit of the story, and it appeared to go over well. More importantly, there were no stuff-ups with the accompanying slides and illustrations on the big screen!

On the other hand, it was intimidating to find himself plagued by a collection of noted academics at the formal dinner after a long day of presentations by various speakers. He found it felt very strange being treated like a fellow academic by many of the senior people at the conference. Such an attitude was not universal, though, as several of those who spoke to him did so in a rather derisive manner, while others barely acknowledged his existence. Still, there were plenty of academics present who were friendly to him and genuinely interested in his now much-rehearsed story of how he made the breakthrough. At least no one seemed to doubt the story was true, which was good!

The majority of those present were Greek or people who could speak Greek. He discovered that while he understood Mycenean Greek, modern Greek was not the same as ancient Mycenean Greek. That was despite the fact that modern Greek grew out of classical Greek, which in turn was a descendant of Mycenean Greek. With people speaking modern Greek in his near vicinity, he was soon able to pick up the modern version of the language. It became easier and easier to follow what they were saying and even start replying. He had no doubt that this rapid lucidity with modern Greek was thanks to the spell Urasmian had thrown on him, which seemed to be working just fine! In fact, he became so proficient with the language that he was at some pains to hide his sudden fluency. Given his halting, obviously very limited ability with the language at the start of the day, it could raise too many questions if he was seen talking like a native by the end of the day.

Urasmian’s spell had obviously kept on working, given how his understanding of language had improved dramatically in a very short time, and he couldn’t help but spend time thinking about how great it would be if he could become a magician himself. Worry about that later, he thought to himself and went back to listening to other people’s conversations. He was surprised to discover just how many of the locals thought he had simply gotten lucky and that one of them should have been the one to make the breakthrough. This chagrin was especially obvious from one of the chaps from the University of Athens who had been on the dig. He was the most indignant about Jason making the connection between the two sets of tablets but was very careful to be polite and charming when speaking to Jason in English! Ah, the joys of academic politics. Just like congress, only not so loud!

The chance that there would be a find of two sets of tablets detailing the same things was pure serendipity, but it gave him the means to hide what he was actually doing. And more fool him, he was dropping his thesis after he had spent two and half years of struggling to come up with either positive proof or even clear dis-proof of his original thesis argument that Mycenean invaders had taken over the Minoan administration, adopting their alphabet and spreading it to the mainland cities like Mycenae only after the occupation. After close to eighty thousand words and hundreds of hours of study, he was going to start a new thesis! Sigh.

In the event, he didn’t find it hard to write about his find at all, detailing the supposed steps he followed to make the breakthrough and the implications of the closeness of the two texts. The words flowed and flowed. He compared his translations of other Linear A tablets with the attempted translations and drew up detailed charts showing how his translation always gave readable and consistent results where others didn’t. Chapters on syntax, trying very hard to show a consistent evolution rather than the magically generated jump courtesy of Urasmian.

In the next two months, he did more typing than he’d done in the previous two years, but in the end, his new thesis was done and was submitted for review. His defense of his new thesis proved to be easy as the two scholars were too enthusiastic over his breakthrough to try very hard. Then, after many corrections and several subtle changes, the thesis was finally accepted, and in due course, he was awarded his Doctorate in Minoan studies. And then the furor that filled the academic journals about his breakthrough also filled his days and even his nights, given the international nature of the discussion. Five different offers to print his thesis!

Throughout the period, he had become so focused on getting the new thesis done that he lost track of the others and where they were up to with their own studies. He found he worked best at home in isolation when doing the type, type, type thing, so didn’t see much of them anyway, and they didn’t really grasp what he was doing until the graduation ceremony. There were actually two journalists from archaeology magazines there wanting photos and interviews! Franny had gone back to France after finishing her thesis but had returned barely in time for the graduation ceremony with her parents. Even the boyfriend turned up for the ceremony. Jason’s mother came to support him, but his father was interstate and couldn’t get back, which was disappointing. But hey, life was like that.

Franny’s parents were nice, and even the boyfriend seemed bemused by the journo’s wanting a piece of Jason. Photos and notes were also taken for the University Journal that was published monthly, and he even got a small article on the local TV channel news site, although not their actual TV news. In the following weeks, he spent most of the time responding to emails and phone calls from academics worldwide. In the third week after receiving his doctorate, he received an invitation to speak at a conference on Minoan affairs at Knossos in Crete! Oh, man! And then he realized he would be only a short hop from Santorini. I wonder if that plant still grows there? He thought to himself. He considered that thought at length. Oooh!

“Right.” She said in a flat tone of voice that Jason couldn’t decide about.

He felt she was either offering contmptuous dismissal, or she was too surprised to know how to respond. She pulled up another page that presumably had the two translations by the noted scholars. She read through them quickly, comparing his as she went, and then sat back and stared into space for a moment. She turned to face him.

“You were saying the words as you translated them, weren’t you?”

Jason spluttered. He hadn’t realized it was that obvious.

“Um. Sort of. The, um, the Myceneans copied the Minoan alphabet, sort of, and it seemed to me that the sounds are sort of similar. But I think Linear A is more guttural. Very Slavic or Russian in style. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. How did I do with the translation?”

The Professor smiled. “The same as one of them here and the other there and completely different in a couple of spots, plus you translated pretty much the whole thing, including the lines they hadn’t managed to do much with. Hmm. I need to think about this.” She glanced up at him. “You were pretty sure of your translation despite how quickly you did it. You hesitated a bit in places, but that should have taken you hours, not a few minutes. Is this tablet one you studied before?”

“No, Professor. I have never seen that one before. I, well, I have just found that the language has sunk in. Mycenean too.” He hesitated and then decided he needed to add some misdirection or something. “It’s been a bit like unraveling one of the phrase puzzles, you know, like on a TV quiz. It’s all sort of vague until you get enough consonants and vowels, and then suddenly, the whole phrase is as clear as day. I think the Mycenean language has been a bit like that for me and now the Linear A as well.” He shrugged.

“I see.” She shook her head and didn’t look like she believed him. “I am not sure what is going on, but what do you want to do?”

She’d clearly decided to leave his unexpected translation skill to another time. Jason relaxed a bit. He hadn’t realized quite how tense he had been waiting for her response to his discovery.

“I thought that I could change my thesis to a study of Linear A and that I could publish the two sets of tablets and the translation of the Linear A ones alongside the Linear B tablets and make some comparisons and also point out the Semitic influence in the Minoan language.”

She considered this for a few moments and then smiled.

“Yes. We can do that. But first, we will need to get permission from the Archaeologists on the dig, plus probably their Faculty’s head. All that could take a while.”

Jason nodded in understanding. He did have some idea of the paperwork that would be involved.

“Will you help me?”

She smiled. “Of course. That is what a supervisor is for. Right. So, this is what we had best do first….”

Two hours later, they had sent numerous emails and worked out an outline for the new thesis. Finally escaping, he staggered down to the Refectory for a badly needed cup of coffee. When he finally made it up to the study room, most of the others had their heads down in whatever they were studying and barely nodded acknowledgment of his presence. He was bursting with his news, and they all pretty much ignored him! All right. See if he cared! He would ignore them right back. He found he was now badly scattered in his head and couldn’t study properly with the thought that he could publish the first translation of Linear A! If, in fact, he could offer a complete breakthrough with the language, he would have to be careful not to be seen to know too much. The result of the spell Urasmian had thrown on him had to be explained away by more rational means!